


raise your right hand

by fullborn



Category: True Detective
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Medically Questionable Alcohol Withdrawal, Repression, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:35:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23667721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullborn/pseuds/fullborn
Summary: There’s no one left in West Finger. What was it he’d said to Detective West that last day? No one left to feel anything for.Tom and Roland met at the wrong time. The right time never comes.
Relationships: Lori (True Detective)/Roland West, Tom Purcell/Roland West
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22
Collections: Fic Journal of the Plague Year





	raise your right hand

**Author's Note:**

> I know we're used to seeing Roland as the more confident/self-aware of the pair but the idea of him being so repressed he doesn't even know he's in the closet kind of snuck up on me, so here's this self-indulgent quarantine fic in which nothing is resolved and everything is as unfortunate as it was in the series. Just what the people want.

_Now_

_‘Hey,’ says Wayne. ‘We made a mistake, don’t you think, with Tom Purcell?’_

_Roland feels some of the warmth go out of the late-afternoon sun, the name plucking a familiar chord that swells in his chest. He lowers his iced tea and looks at his friend. Wayne has turned inward, decades away — a man lost in any time but the present._

_‘We shouldn’t’ve let him go.’ Purple Hays continuing down the avenue into the past, Roland following as always, trailing the line out behind to lead them back to Henrys’ porch and the modern day. ‘I think I could’ve shown more care.’ Wayne grasps for a saving grace, hand coming to rest on Roland’s wrist. ‘You saw him. You always saw more than I did. I got to believe that’s worth something. Still. We shouldn’t have let him go.’_

_Roland lowers his glass of tea and twists his mouth into a flat line. It sneaks up on him, this sadness, a crumbling bedrock of pain as ever-present as the old ache in his leg. Each day chips away a little more, aided by Wayne’s constant stream of regret and regression to create one looping narrative — one in which they never did enough._

_They both know what it means to be past-haunted._

Which time? _Roland doesn’t ask. Tom alone in both versions, stepping out of a jail cell and stepping out of his empty house on Shoepick Lane, already well out of reach._

_Roland should have learned to hold onto him in the first place._

***

_Then_

He works construction sites for a while, welding gas transmission pipelines from Gainesville to Paris, Texas. Rough work but it keeps him alive. Keeps his mind busy, keeps the past from dragging him into the dark end of a bottle lined with every bitter memory from Shoepick Lane, keeps him from collapsing in on himself at the thought of his children cycling away into that setting winter sun. 

It works for a while. Until a steel cap blows off the pipe, taking one man’s jaw clean off and igniting a gas explosion that kills two more and burns five others. Tom sees it all from where he stands at the truck swapping out a faulty torch: flames blooming up and down the trench and him left without so much as a scratch. 

He quits the next day. They tell him he was lucky to get away unharmed. 

Tom laughs at that, gets into his car and drives until he hits the state line and the blue ridges of the Ozarks rise out of landscape before him like huddled burial mounds. He had crossed half the country looking for a way out — but if something was going to kill him surely it would find him here. And besides, the loneliness of Will’s grave with only an empty coffin buried alongside for company makes him sick to his stomach. Better to be near his son. They can bury him beside him when the time comes. 

The thought of how he would do it has built a permanent home in his head. He remembers Lucy taking a revolver from her purse during one of their last arguments, her threat to kill herself right there in their shitty kitchen if he didn’t quit crying about the kids. ‘They’re fuckin’ _gone,_ ’ she had screamed, right before he managed to wrestle the gun out of her clawing hands. ‘Why can’t you see it? I don’t want to hear another word, I can’t, Tom, just fuckin’ let it be. I can’t breathe here.’ She hadn’t pulled the trigger. Neither had he.

The gun sits in his glovebox as a reminder of his own cowardice. 

He continues to drink, a part of him hoping that the choice will be taken out of his hands by accident or by God. When he finally ends up in a hospital bed he can’t remember how he got there. There’s vomit in his throat and in his nose and he thinks he’s going to choke but the doctors won’t let him die no matter how he begs for it.

Like most days, waking is a disappointment. Tom dredges himself from unconsciousness to a tangle of tubes and hospital sheets twisted around his legs, finds a piercing pain chipping away at his skull like an icepick with each passing second. He groans. _1984._ Another year of God refusing to put him out of his misery.

‘There’s a rehab centre in Bentonville with a bed free,’ the nurse tells him as he counts the pocked craters in the chipboard ceiling rather than see the pity in her kind face. ‘I can ring for you, if you want.’

‘I ain’t — I ain’t going there,’ Tom croaks. ‘Please.’

He can hear the concern underpinning her words. ‘Maybe, if you had someone to pick you up, someone you can stay with for a little while. I’m sorry. We can’t let you go if you’re at risk of hurting yourself any further.’

There’s no one left in West Finger. What was it he’d said to Detective West that last day? _No one left to feel anything for._ He thinks of the man for the first time in months, remembering the weight of his hand on Tom’s shoulder the night he told him his son was dead. That same hand holding out a card, the gentle request behind it. West’s figure tilted in the road with his arm raised like a benediction as Tom pulled out of Shoepick Lane for the last time. 

Tom tips his head back onto the pillow and drags the words out before he can lose the sudden impulse to reach out to that hand. ‘Yeah,’ he mumbles. ‘I got a number you could ring.’

It’s easier asking for help from a man who might as well be a stranger, after all these years.

***

It’s barely two weeks into the new year and Roland already wants to opt out of linear time. The pile of reports on his desk refuses to get smaller no matter how many hours he spends slaving over the typewriter while the deadlines only loom closer, and — even more preoccupying — whenever he so much as glances in the mirror he can’t help noticing the handful of newly greying hairs gleaming in his hairline like so many raised middle fingers welcoming him to permanent middle age. Fuck, when did he get so old?

Roland interrupts himself from his brooding to see Mendoza making a beeline for his desk. New kid, snaps to attention like he’s trying to snap his own spine at the smallest provocation. ‘Sergeant,’ he says, and Roland straightens paternally. ‘Lieutenant Hodges asked me to tell you that the meeting with the Neighbourhood Watch committee has been postponed til next week.’

‘Devastating,’ Roland grunts. The kid hovers, so he asks, ‘That it?’

‘A hit came on that ATL you asked for. Uh, Tom Purcell?’

‘Yeah?’ Roland’s up and shrugging on his coat before Mendoza even tells him the location. Is it abuse of power, using a locate bulletin for personal matters -- particularly since he’s only just got the damn promotion? Maybe so. But he doesn’t let it bother him too much as he hits the road and drives to where the patrolman called it in. A dive bar on the corner: big surprise.

Three years without so much as a peep from the man, then a call from a medical centre in Fayetteville asking for Roland by name on New Year’s Eve? Roland may have been fairly drunk himself but his night looked to have been as sedate as a temperance meeting compared to the one Tom Purcell had suffered: red-eyed, pale and hollowed out as death, tugging at the IV drip in his hand with ragged fingers. It had been a shock to see him like that, without a flare of anger for show. He had just looked tired. 

Roland had taken him back to his apartment and tried to wring out some idea of where Tom had been these past few years but it was hard when Tom could barely meet his eye let alone hold a conversation. Roland fed him instead. Watched him to make sure he didn’t do any of the things the doctors had warned him he might do, but still fell asleep — and when he woke Tom was gone. Just like the last time he had left the man on his couch. 

But the old worry had resurfaced, just like that, and whatever closure Roland might have found after the Purcell case was in danger of falling completely apart while he knew Tom was running around West Finger with a death wish and no one to hold him back. So he put out the Attempt To Locate and here he was, checking in on a man who had made it clear he considered Roland as nothing more than a last resort. 

‘I thought you might’ve made it as far as Benton County at the very least,’ Roland says as he approaches the spot where Tom is hunched over the bar. ‘Or somewhere less obvious. Please tell me you ain’t lookin’ to make a repeat performance of the other week, cause I don’t aim to make it a habit.’

Tom doesn’t even look up, just keeps his dark head bowed over his glass. ‘That was a mistake,’ he rasps.

Roland settles himself on the stool next to Tom and regards his gaunt profile with a steady eye. ‘Well I’d hate to see what you’d do on purpose.’

The choked noise Tom makes is closer to a laugh than any sound he’s ever made in Roland’s hearing. ‘That’s the thing, ain’t it,’ he says. ‘I don’t have that in me.’

‘Could’ve at least said that before disappearing in the dead of night, on my watch. Now,’ Roland says, spreading his hands on the bar and Tom’s gaze flickers to the motion.‘I don’t want to drag you down to the station, nor do I want to be the one to find you dead in a ditch. You see my dilemma?’ 

‘You ain’t my keeper —’ Tom begins, but Roland cuts him off.

‘Lucky for me, I have a fix. You know Suzie’s diner by Northwest Baptist?’ Tom nods. ‘If I don’t see you there at 10am, Saturday — every Saturday from now on — I’ll assume that you’ve come into some kind of trouble. And despite what you may think of me, Mr. Purcell, I don’t get any kick out of seeing folks at their lowest. I’d rather see you well.’

The silence stretches out beside him. Tom rubs his eyes and screws up his face, frowning into his drink. Roland doesn’t push. 

‘All right, Detective,’ Tom finally mumbles, without looking at him. ‘I mean. Sergeant. I’ll be there.’

‘Good man.’ Roland gets to his feet and claps a hand to Tom’s back. Tom barely flinches but Roland can feel the taut pull of his shoulders through his shirt, surprisingly firm, and regrets the familiarity even as he struggles to name the impulse that made him do it in the first place. ‘Saturday,’ he says as he makes his exit, and Tom grunts.

A brief image as the door swings shut behind him. _Tom twisted around in his seat watching him go._

***

Every time he drinks Tom regrets reaching out to Sergeant West. It clenches his stomach, imagining the quiet disappointment in Roland’s face from across their corner table — except Roland is never disappointed to see Tom; it’s clear in the flash of genuine relief that crosses his face every time the door bell chimes as Tom pushes his way into the diner. As if he had expected this was the week Tom would decide not to show.

Tom is never drunk but he drinks. It keeps him steady. He needs to be steady around Roland — he has grown unused to concern. It’s the same concern that threw Tom’s anger off-kilter during the initial investigation and left him with nothing but shame, and it makes him ashamed now. _I’d rather see you well,_ says Roland’s voice in his head, the blonde sheen of his hair gone red in the neon window sign as Tom approaches. He looks up and something gentle softens his expression. 

It loosens an ache wedged deep in Tom’s gut. He decides he would like to be well. 

***

Roland doesn’t worry. He doesn’t rush to Tom’s apartment, peer through the windows or rifle through the trash to see if the man is drinking himself to death rather than lying sick in bed when Tom rings up to excuse himself from their upcoming Saturday meeting. Roland had to admit Tom had sounded rough. And it was true there was some flu going around the office - he’s already two detectives and an officer down - so that fact is enough for him to give Tom the benefit of the doubt. 

Still. It doesn’t sit right with him, the idea of Tom bedridden with no one to check in on him. But it would be unforgivable if Roland were to show up to his house, unbidden, to cross yet another line by invading Tom’s privacy at a vulnerable moment when he’s already seen more of Tom woundedthan anyone should. It would be too familiar. Especially when it’s clear Tom barely tolerates their meetings as it is — his eyes remain fixed on his hands throughout; when he talks it’s as if the effort is costing him more than he can bear. He practically flees the diner after the clock hits the hour mark and Roland lets him, content to see him upright and unharmed. They’re not friends. He presumes to force Tom into one-sided fixed coffee arrangement, but he doesn’t presume that much.

Which is why it comes as such a surprise when he arrives home from work to find Tom sitting on the steps of his apartment, looking as wretched as he’s ever seen him.

‘Tom?’ Roland says, and Tom unfolds himself from his huddled posture to look at Roland with reddened eyes glazed with fever, shivering from the confines of his coat. ‘Shit, you look terrible.’

‘Feel it,’ croaks Tom. His fingers twitch on the fabric of his jeans, thin as kindling and just as brittle. ‘I couldn’t — I had to get out of that place. Couldn’t think where else to go.’

Roland wedges his coat under one arm and takes Tom under the elbow with his free hand, and together they make it up the stairs to Roland’s bachelor apartment. He deposits Tom on the sofa and heads to his bedroom to strip the sheets and make up the bed. When he returns Tom is curled in on himself like a dog gone under the porch to die, hair damp and tangled with sweat and eyes screwed tightly shut. 

‘Tom,’ says Roland. ‘C’mon. Bed.’

He sits at Tom’s side and unlaces his boots. He dumps them alongside Tom’s coat on the floor before coaxing Tom to his feet and directing him to the bedroom. Tom collapses on the bed with an animal groan. 

Roland sits quietly at his side and watches him shudder; the span of his hands racked with an uncontrollable tremor that shakes through his whole body.

‘I had an uncle once,’ Roland says, then pauses. ‘He, uh. He was a heavy drinker. Always swore he’d get himself back on track, not like we expected much. Then he died. Didn’t find his body for three days. Turned out he had a seizure after trying to kick the bottle without tellin’ anyone.’ He swallows. ‘Tell me, Tom. Can’t help what I don’t know.’

Pain strains the edges of Tom’s mouth and furrows his forehead. ‘I thought—’ he says, ‘I thought I could just. Stop. I wanted to stop. Christ, I feel like I’m goin’ to die I feel so bad.’

‘You’re not going to die, hear me?’Roland gets to his feet. ‘Shit, Tom, there’s a right and a wrong way to do it. And it’s fuckin’ dangerous to do alone, you could’ve asked me to —’ He reigns his anger in; there’s no point to it now with the damage already done. ‘Hold on.’ 

He feeds Tom a valium from the tube of pills rattling around the bottom of his drawer alongside the other drugs, reminders of the days Roland used to keep pills for pleasure, not for pain. The valium’s good though. Roland still gets spasms in his leg sometimes, muscle weakness that has him hauling half his body around like a dead weight — no wonder they stuck him behind a desk rather than let him back in the field crippled like that, but the fact if it still rankles. 

Still, he’s grateful for the pills tonight. Tom’s shaking subsides.

‘I can’t sleep,’ Tom keeps saying as the night slips into morning and the birds start their fussing in the trees outside, clutching at Roland’s arm. ‘If I go to sleep I won’t wake up. I know it. I _can’t._ ’

‘It’s okay,’ says Roland. ‘You’re okay, man.’

‘I tried, y’know. Went from twelve cans down to ten, tapered down, but maybe I rushed it too much. Thought I was managin’.’

‘It’s not your fault. You tried, that’s what matters.’

‘I’m so fuckin’ sorry,’ Tom moans. ‘You gotta know that.’

‘Hey. None of that, now.’ Roland unfolds the newspaper, trying to channel the voice of every firm schoolteacher that ever cuffed him around the head. ‘Listen here.’ 

He starts reading aloud. By the middle of a dry article titled _Democrats Demand Probe of Central American Policy_ he’s pretty sure Tom’s breathing has slowed into the steady rhythm of sleep. His own eyes itch with tiredness and he notices with a kind of blunted nausea that his alarm is due to go off in five minutes. He takes the batteries out of the digital clock, half-closes the door. Calls in sick to work, then rings his doctor to ask about a purely hypothetical scenario that inspires a long, foreboding lecture that highlights the benefits of over-the-counter vitamins and magnesium and finishes with the obvious warning that Roland is not a medical professional, and should seek medical help should Tom’s condition worsen. No shit.

It’s only two days til the weekend. There’s enough groceries and valium to last a week. Roland sprawls on the sofa and prepares himself to settle in for the long haul. 

After three days staked out by Tom’s bedside, Roland’s not sure whether he prefers Tom awake or not. When Tom is conscious he seems to be balanced on the edge of panic, sweating and shaking like a man possessed and begging Roland to put him out of his misery.

The nights are just as bad, if not worse. Tom cries in his sleep. 

Roland has some idea of the demons haunting the man. It makes him think of the case, a cave mouth that looms in the recesses of his mind in which the body of Will Purcell lies with his child’s hands folded and his face gone sallow with death. A drink would sort that, but Roland has locked his whiskey away along with his gun. He’s not sure which Tom would go for if given a choice. He doesn’t aim to find out.

Exhaustion hollows out Tom’s face until he looks as worn as he did when Roland picked him up from the hospital, too tired to even speak. His forehead blazes with heat, his armpits and chest soak with sweat that stains the sheets, all fight drained out of him. 

He lets Roland lead him to the bathroom. He lets Roland tug his sweat-rung shirt over his head like a kid, swaying passively as water runs into the bath, and tugs down his jeans and boxers without complaint. The tepid water sloshes as Tom steps into the tub. They’re both too tired to care about the indignity of it; Tom is naked and Roland is not and it doesn’t matter at all.

Roland soaps the gooseflesh along Tom’s arms and thighs and drags the flannel across his chest. Surprised to find him hairier than he is, somehow, even after noting the dark long hair on Tom’s forearms every time he rolled up his sleeves from across the diner table; it feels like an answered question, one that he never asked aloud. He finds himself staring at the spattering of freckles dotted along the racked ridge of Tom’s ribs and spine. 

‘I dreamt last night,’ murmurs Tom. ‘I dreamt Julie was alive, that she came back. D’you ever have dreams like that, Detective?’

Roland lets his hand dangle in the water. ‘Yeah,’ he admits. ‘Sometimes.’ 

Right now his only wish is that Tom would come back from the weight of the death-dream dragging him under. 

When he returns home from work on Monday it’s to find Tom curled in an armchair, television casting colour across his pale face. Relief floods Roland’s chest; he half expected Tom would cut and run. He shrugs off his jacket, thinking Tom asleep but then Tom shifts and mumbles, ‘Hey,’ in a voice gone rough with disuse. 

‘How’re you feelin’?’ asks Roland, though it’s a stupid question when everything about Tom screams _terrible._

‘Like I need a drink,’ Tom says. 

Roland fetches him a glass of water and watches his throat work as he drinks it down like a man from some dried-out wasteland. 

The next morning he finds Tom sitting in the kitchen wrapped Roland’s ratty striped dressing gown, bare leg poking out from pyjama pants that are a good two inches too short for him. He pushes a cup of coffee across the table towards Roland. 

That stays with Roland as he drives to the office: the mug of coffee, warm as the slow realisation unfurling its meaning in his mind. It had tasted _good._ Three sugars and dollop of creamer, exactly as he took it, which meant that somewhere among the stiff awkwardness of their forced meetings Tom had looked across the table and had taken note of the emptied sugar packets and cream pitcher; he had watched as Roland preoccupied himself with turning his coffee into something he could make himself drink. He had payed attention. 

For some reason that thought keeps Roland afloat throughout the entire day. 

***

The floodgate holding his worst thoughts breaks open. He had kept them defanged with alcohol, but now? Tom dreads the dark dreams that hunt him whether sleeping or not, half-memory half-imagination, more real than the sensation of his own sweating limbs in the night. He can feel parts of him unravelling the longer he goes without uninterrupted sleep. 

Memories he has no control over play out a constant splicing reel in his head, shame a running thread of most of them now his mind and body have turned against him. Then again, his body has always been against him.

There had been a building he had been afraid to enter. He remembers sitting at a corner table clutching his beer like a lifeline, sick to his stomach with nerves. There had been other men and he hadn’t had the courage to lift his gaze from his hands to look at so much as one of them. He had drained his drink and gone home. It was a memory he thought he had shoved deep down inside until he’d fooled himself it had never existed in the fist place, but here it is, floating up to the surface of his mind like yet another dead thing.

There had been a man at bar. He remembers now, glancing over on his shameful way out and taking note of the confident set to his shoulders, trim sideburns, the flash of a heavy ring as he took a sip of his bourbon. The kind of square fist that could have Tom bleeding on the concrete in one punch, except this is the one bar men do _not_ go to fight and Tom hadn’t wanted to draw any attention to himself. What Tom had noticed most about the man, though, was his western-style sports coat. 

He had noticed it again that cold night in November: a moment of pure recognition that had instantly receded into a flood of worry and fear for his children, felt more than thought in the moment the two detectives introduced themselves and he found himself grasping for an association he couldn’t quite place. The questions had started and he had put it from his mind.

The image returns. Tom gropes for the light in the dark and sits upright in Sergeant West’s bed, staring at opposite wall. Surely it’s some kind of false memory distorted by wishful thinking and his own unwelcome impulses — but he could swear the stranger’s jacket had been exactly the same cut and colour of the blazer now hanging from Roland’s closet door. 

Tom lies back down and stares at the ceiling. _And if it was,_ he thinks, fighting a wave of panicked nausea. _And if it was, that doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean anything._

_***_

Roland sits Tom down in the kitchen and cuts his hair before his first AA meeting. It grows out in the weeks afterward, but part of him keeps that picture tucked away in the corner of his mind: the bristles at the back of Tom’s neck, clumps of dark hair falling to the parquet floor, the tense ridge of his shoulders. 

It had been strange dropping Tom off at the community centre. From a distance, with his hair cropped and face newly shaved, he could be an entirely different person: a father going to pick his kids up from after-school club or a volunteer with the elderly, not a man weak from withdrawal, afraid of stepping beyond an open door. 

Roland goes inside only once. Ninety days in and Tom seems steadier; steady enough to ask Roland to come with him to an open meeting where friends and family of the attendees observe the proceedings with a forced air, their casual interest betrayed by the shifty way they regard the rest of the room as if fearful that alcoholism could be catching. Roland sits beside Tom at the front and keeps his judgements to himself.

Afterwards, an older woman greets him as he stands alone with a cup of tepid coffee at the back of the hall. He shakes her hand, perfunctory, explaining, ‘I’m a friend of Tom’s.’

‘But of course,’ she says, a genuine smile spreading across her lined face. ‘You’re Roland. Tom’s told us all about you.’

It catches him off guard. 

He’s grateful when Tom comes back from the bathroom, rubbing a nervous hand through hair that has grown long enough to curl over his collar. 

***

_1985_

‘It’s nice,’ Roland says, taking in the wood-panelled walls of the trailer, the light streaming in the windows, the neat kitchen, the unpacked boxes piled in the corner by the writing desk. ‘You made a good call, Tom. Shame I couldn’t help you move in.’

Tom shrugs, secretly pleased. It _is_ nice. Much nicer than any place he’s stayed since 1980, somewhere he could invite people around to without feeling ashamed or pitied. It feels like a home. He likes the trees out back, having his own space; even the rattle of passing cars on the distant highway seems soothing rather than a reminder of fitful nights spent in his car at the side of the road with nowhere else to go. 

‘Ain’t got nothing more than soda on offer,’ says Tom, reaching into the fridge. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s okay.’

They drink out on the front steps. Roland lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. They pass it back and forth in the dying sunlight until the filter turns to ash in Tom’s fingers and the air goes cool and damp. 

‘Hey,’ Roland says when they’re back inside, unloading the remainder of Tom’s life from the last few boxes. ‘Is that a turntable? Don’t see any records.’

‘Was going cheap. Didn’t really think that far.’

‘Huh,’ huffs Roland, mock-disappointed as he hefts the machine in his hands. ‘A music player with nothing to play. S’worse than a car without any gas.’

Tom doesn’t think anything more of it, but the next time Roland comes around he arrives on Tom’s doorstep with a stack of records shoved under his arm.

‘Now,’ says Roland, carefully sliding a record out of its sleeve with a flourish before placing it on the turntable. ‘There we go, man, this is the good stuff.’

The record drags as the needle finds the starting track. Music fills the trailer, something about _when the west was young_ that Tom doesn’t recognise but he likes it — or maybe, if he’s being honest with himself, he likes that Roland likes it. 

He thumbs through Roland’s collection, stopping to read the title whenever he feels the soft-worn edge of a particularly well-used record. A new song starts. Tom sits, and to his surprise Roland ignores the lumpy armchair in favour of dropping heavily on the sofa beside him. He tries not to notice as Roland tips his head back and hums along, eyes half-closed and self-satisfied as a tomcat. 

They sit in an easy silence even after the first side runs out. Tom looks over to where Roland is slumped against the cushions and feels the absurd urge to run his thumb down the exposed ridge of his throat. 

A stiff heat creeps into his stomach; an old feeling, one that makes him unreasonably afraid that Roland will catch him looking. Tom leaps up and Roland startles, blinking sleepily up at him in a way that makes him strangely endearing for a man that told him his son was dead. 

‘Next side,’ Tom explains weakly. He flips the record. When he sits back down he makes sure to take the chair.

It becomes something of a routine, Roland dropping around with a new record and a placable kindness that fills Tom with guilt for every moment it makes him want to touch him. Tom is six months sober. He feels good whenever he isn’t feeling bad, which is more than he can say for the past four years, maybe longer.For once the future doesn’t feel like a grave to fall into and he doesn’t know what to do with it. 

‘I had a cassette of this back when I was a detective,’ says Roland. ‘The fuckin’ patrol car ate the damn thing, jammed up the tape deck. My partner was pretty pissed about that at the time. ’

They’re sitting side by side again, listening to something slow and sad that Tom remembers from days before the kids were born. Roland’s knee keeps brushing against Tom’s, and it’s slowly driving him insane. 

‘Bout time you put on something I actually know,’ Tom grumbles. ‘Course it has to be this depressin’ shit.’

Roland laughs. ‘I’ll change it if you want.’

He moves to get up and Tom catches his wrist. ‘It’s fine,’ he says, as Roland lets him pull him back down onto the sofa. ‘I like it.’

Roland shrugs but he looks pleased. A strand of hair has come loose over one eye but he makes no move to fix it, perhaps waiting for Tom to release his hand, and Tom feels the moment solidifying into something else as the seconds tick on and the urge to kiss him is so powerful he can’t bring himself to hold back any longer. 

He leans in.

‘Whoa,’ Roland says, bracing a hand against Tom’s chest. ‘Tom. Uh.’

They look at each other. There is genuine confusion creasing Roland’s face, a slight frown digging into his forehead as he takes in the fact that Tom just tried to lay one on him without warning. 

Bitter disappointment clenches Tom’s insides. _What did you expect?_ he thinks, blindly getting to his feet while the shame burns hot across his face. Roland remains frozen in place. It’s clear he has never once considered the unnatural thoughts that have been plaguing Tom for weeks: Roland doesn’t want like he does, Roland isn’t like him —

‘Fuck,’ groans Tom. He covers his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to — _Fuck._ ’

‘Can we back it up? Tom?’ Roland sounds concerned, trying to talk Tom down from yet another ledge. That’s all this is. ‘Hey, hang on, let’s just —’

Tom fumbles his jacket off the hook, not looking back as he flings the screen door open and makes his escape. He can hear Roland calling after him but Tom doesn’t care. The scene keeps playing out in his head: Roland’s brows coming together, eyes wide, his hand instinctively coming between them. He could tear out his own eyes. Cut off his own hands rather than do something so stupid towards the only man in his life close to resembling a friend. 

Tom walks for hours. A single car passes him the entire time, casting up a trail of dust, and he prepares to jump the ditch into the adjoining field if he sees so much as a brake light but the driver pays him no mind. No sign of Roland. No sign of a lynch mob. He might as well not exist.

Tom’s throat is dry with thirst and his clothes are covered in dust by the time he circles back to his trailer. The sun is setting behind the trees. He realises with a sinking feeling that Roland’s car is still parked outside right before he spots the man himself, who looks up from his seat on the porch steps with the instinctive air of a dog waiting for its owner’s return. Too late to turn around. Tom closes his eyes and prays for a sinkhole to open in the ground beneath his feet. 

As always, God has never been very accommodating.

‘Didn’t know if you had your keys,’ Roland says, gesturing apologetically at the door propped open behind him, like he has anything to apologise for. ‘Can we, uh, talk about it?’

Tom shoots him a pleading look. 

‘You surprised me is all. Didn’t know you…’ It’s painful, watching Roland flounder for the right words. ‘Hell, I had an uncle who —’

‘That the same one drank himself to death?’ asks Tom, the anger he feels toward himself bleeding into a sharp edge. Roland winces.

‘That’s not what I meant. Just, I didn’t know you felt like that.’

‘Like a queer? Only my whole fuckin’ life.’

The frown above Roland’s eyes deepens. ‘Tom. Work with me here. I’m tryin’, okay?’

‘Just when you think I couldn’t get any more fuckin’ pathetic,’ spits Tom, teeth clenched so hard he can feel the muscles bunching along his jaw. He scuffs his shoes in the gravel. ‘All I got is a long line of mistakes, you know that. Can’t help myself.’

‘Only thing I know is that you’re a good man, Tom,’ says Roland very slowly. ‘Whatever you feel’s got nothing to do with that.’

To his embarrassment a sharp stinging floods his eyes. He blinks, anger leeching out of him into nothingness and leaving only shame. ‘I did it cause I wanted to, and I thought you might —’ He cringes at his own blind stupidity. ‘It ain’t your fault. Can’t we just forget it?’

Roland spreads his hands on his thighs, keeping his voice carefully neutral. ‘If that’s what you want.’ 

‘Wouldn’t be beggin’ you otherwise.’

‘Okay, then,’ grunts Roland as he unfolds himself from his position on the steps and shrugs on his sports coat. ‘I’ll, uh, see you around then.’

Tom steps back to let the other man past to his car and Roland lifts a hand as if to pat him on the shoulder, but something — an imperceptible flinch on Tom’s part or some instinct that his touch is the last thing Tom wants right now — makes him lower his arm. It’s painfully awkward. 

The comfort of the empty trailer is all Tom is thinking of as he mounts the steps as fast as he can, but he’s not fast enough. 

‘One last thing,’ calls Roland, just when he thinks he’s home clear. Tom pauses. ‘Tell me this ain’t going to have you drinkin’ again and I’ll leave you be.’

_How much easier would it be to drown the memory in a bottle of whiskey?_ But Roland is serious, the concern on his face as plain as if it was etched there, and Tom cannot bear to disappoint him.

‘Not tonight,’ he concedes. Something soft and worried strains at the corners of Roland’s eyes and mouth, but he nods, grim as he was when faced with two missing children.

‘That’s something.’

‘Guess so,’ mutters Tom. But his gaze slides past Roland’s as he says it.

***

It’s not deliberate, the way their relationship slowly grinds to a halt. Their meetings at the diner give way to stiff, formal phone calls; the unsaid thing blocking the line, lodged in between them like a stone. Roland gets landed with a nasty case that drags into a long court proceeding.Tom continues to check in until he doesn’t. 

If he’s being honest, Roland thought the call would come sooner than it does. It’s been three months since he’s seen Tom in person and he’s afraid of what he might find when he pulls up outside another Fayetteville dive bar. Imaging a repeat of that night in the Sawhorse as he limps toward the swinging door — but he doesn’t even need to go that far. He smells cigarette smoke, turns to spot two men standing under the tattered awning to his left. One unknown — leather bomber jacket, broad-shouldered, big hand propped on the smaller man’s upper arm in a way that makes Roland’s skin crawl. 

‘Mr. Purcell,’ calls Roland as he approaches, reverting to his cop voice for the other guy’s benefit. ‘What’s doin’?’

Tom’s slow on the uptake, squinting from under his cap to find the new voice. There’s no blood, sure, but the belligerent expression that closes his face is too similar to the one he had aimed at Lucy’s boss for Roland’s liking. 

‘Sergeant?’ he asks, unfolding his arms. There’s colour high on his cheeks, stubble heavy on his throat, too unkempt to be fully sober. Roland knocks aside a twinge of guilt and lowers a glare at Tom’s companion.

‘You want to explain what’s goin’ on? Think it’s funny, huh, watchin’ a recovering alcoholic fall off the wagon, maybe buy him a few drinks to get him on his way? ’

The guy straightens up to his full height, raises his eyebrows. ‘Hey, man,’ he grunts. ‘Don’t know shit about that, and it ain’t like I told him to get pissed. Is this a free country or what?’

‘What’re you doin’ here anyway?’ slurs Tom. ‘I didn’t call you, I called—’

‘Your sponsor, yeah, I know. She called me. Said you’d left a message sounding like you were geared up to do something stupid, that you said you were sittin’ in a bar. So here I am five dives later, come to take your ass home. You’re welcome.’

‘They teach you presumption in detective school? Who says I want to go anywhere with you?’

‘Think you’d have to be a hell of a lot more drunk to get into a car with this asshole.’

The guy’s face darkens. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

He’d be good looking in the light, in a rugged kind of way. Maybe it’s that fact that lets the part of Roland that’s itching for a fight get the better of him.

‘ _Meanin’_ ,’ Roland says, ‘anybody lookin’ to get fucked by you’d be better off unconscious than having to look at that lump of shit you call a face.’

The tension bleeds beautifully into the air. Tom has gone rigid with surprise, eyes darting nervously between the two of them as if unsure which one will swing first. 

‘You sure you want to go there, little man?’ the guy growls. 

Roland feels the urge for it spoiling in his chest — it’s been too long since he split his hands down to the knuckles, since those dark nights in the barn with Wayne and their shared anger— and he shifts a little, showing his teeth. 

‘C’mon, motherfucker. Poor show of manners, keepin’ a fella waitin’.’

The guy swings a meaty fist but Roland sees it coming a mile off and ducks back, leading him into the parking lot. The joy of it sharpens his senses. He gets in a double-tap to the guy’s ribs and follows up with his left, bang on the jaw. Classic form. The guy doubles over, manages to hit Roland a glancing blow with his elbow as he goes down but Roland barely feels it over the blood pounding in his ears. He feels good. 

The guy staggers upright and launches himself forward. One fist lands in Roland’s side — this one hurts — and he stumbles before finding his footing and driving his elbow hard into the other man’s back until he hits tarmac. One hand finds Roland’s boot but Roland steps back, threads his fingers into the guy’s hair and prepares to put him down for good.

It’s always the same with the big ones. They go down hard.

‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ,’ comes Tom’s voice. ‘He’s had enough, ain’t he?’

Roland looks up to find him standing a few feet away. For a moment he thinks Tom might throw a punch his way but he just stands there staring at the blood on Roland’s fists, his own clenched loosely at his sides.

‘Okay.’ Something loosens in Roland’s throat. The rage, perhaps. ‘You’re right.’ 

Roland brushes the hair out of his eyes and shakes out his hands. He doesn’t bother checking if Tom is following as he limps back to his car, just focuses on walking without flinching with every other step. 

‘You gettin’ in?’ Roland asks. 

Tom shifts on his feet but doesn’t move any closer. ‘Roland,’ he rasps unevenly. ‘What the hell? Fuckin’ that guy up like you’re doin’ me a favour — I look like I asked for that?’

‘Only thing you look is drunk.’

‘Fuck you, man.’ Tom rocks back on his heels, swipes a hand across his stubble. ‘Didn’t realise that was your fuckin’ mandate.’ He flings his arms up. ‘And, _shit,_ I sure as hell didn’t realise I had to ask for your holy-fuckin’-approval every time I’m so much as lookin’ for a dick to suck. My bad.’

Roland winces.  ‘If you think I’m just goin’ to step back and let you dig yourself further into that grave you’re aimin’ for,’ he says. ‘You got another thing comin’.’

‘Who fuckin’ cares if I —’ 

‘I do.’ Roland yanks open the door and jams his keys into the ignition. ‘Now get in the damn car.’ 

The drive out to Tom’s trailer is endless and totally silent apart from the rattle of the engine. Roland grips the steering wheel and watches the road loom from darkness into the light of his headlights, bites his tongue to stop himself from starting a full-blown argument.

They sit and listen to the car tick to a halt a whole minute after Roland pulls into Tom’s driveway.

‘Tell me you’re goin’ to ring your sponsor in the mornin’,’ Roland finally says. The urge to apologise sits high in his throat but he keeps his tone gruff, keeps his eyes fixed on the windshield. 

‘Yeah.’

‘Right. Well.’

Tom stumbles out of the car. ‘You’re bleedin’, so you know,’ he mumbles, and swings the door shut behind him.

The taste of blood fills Roland’s mouth as he watches Tom disappear inside the darkness beyond his front door. He imagines Tom sitting in the dark of his empty trailer, waiting for the telltale sound of the engine and the glare of the headlights through his window so he can finally be alone.

Roland hits the road.

***

_1986_

Tom has sixteen AA chips in total. He keeps his most recent one in his jacket pocket, a reassuring distraction to run his fingers over whenever he needs to centre himself. Two months this time around. The others serve as a perverse collection: among them three sets of white chips, three separate starts at sobriety that sit on his writing desk as a constant reminder of how easy it is to fuck up his own life. 

They make him think of the way Julie used to beg him to buy certain cereal boxes just for the free Star Trek badges (despite the fact Will was the one who watched the show), intent as she was on collecting them all in neat rows on her bookshelf; round plastic disks, relatively worthless. He keeps them all the same. 

Each chip has the words “To Thine Own Self Be True” in curving embossed letters around the number of months or years spent sober. _To Thine Own Self Be True._ It makes Tom wonder if they know how laughable that advice really is. 

It makes him think of Roland.

***

Logically, Roland knows that an interview dealing with the Purcell case is going to end up leading back to Tom but he’s no less prepared when it does. 

The call from Amelia Reardon had thrown him off balance — the surprise that she was the one calling him six years later, not Wayne, then the bitter realisation that it was no social call. He had read her article from his hospital bed in ’80, gotten himself discharged so he could make Wayne’s case to the top brass and _still_ Wayne had thrown their partnership to the wayside in a sudden fit of moral conscience and an obvious desire to keep his dick wet; like Roland was a cheap lay, something Wayne could easily ditch once chained to a woman and a steady 9 to 5. He doesn’t say this to Amelia, of course, but he can’t help feel somewhat cool towards her as she unpacks her tape recorder and notebook on the sofa opposite him.

Roland certainly doesn’t give two shits about her book. The idea that the case can be reduced down to a neatly packaged bestseller — conclusion attached — makes him want to grind his teeth. There’s no meaning to the Purcell tragedy and no ending. No big story to tie everything together. It’s not something that he can put back on the shelf whenever he feels like it. Not for him, and not for Tom either. 

If it weren’t for his old loyalty to Wayne he wouldn’t be talking to her at all.

She clicks the record button with a fussy practiced motion. The light goes red.

‘It’s May 16th, 1986,’ says Amelia in a measured voice.‘I’m talking to Sergeant Roland West, one of the investigating detectives that first arrived at the Purcell house on the night of November 7th, who was also injured in the line of duty during the events that followed. Now, Mr West…’ 

He takes her through it. She writes pages of dense, looping notes in her spiral notebook and keeps her clear brown eyes on him the entire time. 

‘Tom and Lucy…,’ she says absently, flicking through her writing. ‘Could you tell me your first impressions of them, as a couple? Married young, kids soon after — I got the impression they didn’t really know each other that long before Will was born. That can bring its own shape to a marriage.’

‘Yeah?’ Roland stretches, letting his irritation show. ‘Kind of like the way y’all got married pretty quick, don’t you think? Didn’t get an invitation, as I recall.’

Amelia’s pen halts in its path. She looks at him, unflustered, her answer easy as her tone.

‘Wayne caught me out,’ she admits. ‘Acted like it was all spontaneous and exciting until we went down to the courthouse and my parents showed up to witness. I thought it was rather sweet.’

‘Never knew him for such a romantic.’

‘He’s full of surprises.’

‘What’s he think, by the way?’ asks Roland, real casual. ‘This whole book deal, I mean, would’ve thought that’d be a conflict of interest.’

‘I thought the same for you.’

‘I cleared this with my bosses, if that’s what you mean. Ain’t a conflict of anything.’

The next question comes lightning fast. ‘Would you say that your involvement with the case helped with your promotion?’

Roland shrugs. ‘They don’t just hand ‘em out, you know. You got to do an exam. Even have to read and write nowadays, you imagine?’

‘Just about.’ He snorts. Amelia leans forward, studiously professional. ‘So, back to Mr Purcell. How did he strike you that night, and during the subsequent investigation?’

‘Like a guy that was out of his mind about his kids. _Worried._ Lot of the time those kind of calls end up as a real time waster, kids just didn’t notice it gettin’ dark, that kind of shit. Think right up until Wayne found the body we were all hopin’ there’d be some kind of easy explanation to the whole thing.’

‘He seemed genuinely concerned?’

‘Yeah. To understate it, he seemed _genuinely_ concerned.’

‘Did you notice Mr Purcell had been drinking?’

‘Is that relevant?’

‘I don’t know. Is it?’

‘I observed Mr Purcell with a drink, yes. But he’s come a long way since then.’

For the first time during the entire interview he has thrown her off her rhythm. Amelia’s head comes up, brows drawn together, another question already forming on her lips.

‘Are you saying you’ve been in contact with Mr Purcell since the investigation ended in 1980?’

Oh boy. He’s walked into the shit. 

‘Um,’ says Roland eloquently. ‘I guess you could say I’ve kept tabs on him. You know. To see if he’s doin’ okay.’

Amelia blinks. She has even stopped writing. ‘The last thing I could find about him —’ She checks her notes. ‘Was an arrest for public drunkenness in Durant, Oklahoma, 1983. Is he?’

‘Is he what?’ he says, a little stupidly.

‘Doing okay.’

He thinks of the last time he saw Tom, the anger in his voice and the misery behind his eyes whenever he looked at Roland — and the time before that. _The brush of his breath against Roland’s mouth, the flush high up on his cheeks and the faint click of his jaw as he leaned in so that Roland could make out each freckle and broken capillary scattered across his nose._ Not for the first time, Roland wonders what would have happened if he had let Tom kiss him; if he had given Tom what he was looking for and made him shiver with it instead of pushing him away. 

‘Uhh,’ grunts Roland, pushing the thought from his mind. It doesn’t go quietly. ‘I think so. He’s workin’ the steps. Got a place back in the state, makin’ rent. If you’re lookin’ for a more comprehensive insight on the word _okay_ ,’ he says, trying for some humour, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to ask his priest.’

Amelia absorbs this seriously, taking in his words with a level look as if she’s discovered something new about him. He doubts Wayne is out there making sure Lucy Purcell is alive and kicking. Maybe he doesn’t so much as think about the case; Purple always had a way of ignoring the past in a way that Roland can’t. 

Perhaps that’s what she’s writing in her notebook now, ink gliding over paper with ease: _Roland West is a man that cares._

***

Somehow over the past year Tom has learned to pray. It’s feeling useful right now, as he sits in his car outside Missouri Eastern Correctional, watching the man with the scraggly hair and goatee slip through the heavy metal doors and squint around the parking lot with the air of a mangy cat sizing up new territory. He spots Tom and a shit-eating grin cuts across his face. 

‘Well, if it isn’t Tommy Purcell,’ says Dan O’Brien by way of greeting, sidling over to Tom’s open window. ‘Didn’t recognise you there without the fuckin’ Selleck lip hair…What did you do, leave it at home with the Ferrari?’ He slaps the car bonnet. ‘What the fuck is this?’ 

‘A Ford. You might’ve heard of ‘em.’

‘Fuck,’ says Dan. ‘Didn’t think you’d actually show, and when you do it’s with this beige piece of shit? I’d’ve been better walkin’.’

‘Still an option, you want it.’ Tom guns the engine, already feeling the old frustration boiling under his skin. The Tom of six years ago would have told Dan to go fuck himself instead of driving five hours to pick him up out of prison, but Tom is a changed man. Or so he’d like to think.

‘Whoa there, buddy.’ Dan jogs around the car and slips in, shit-eating grin still attached to his face. ‘I’m grateful, honest. See?’ He reaches into the zip-loc bag in his hand and pulls out a twenty. ‘Don’t say I never gave you anything. Morning wood don’t count.’

Tom pulls out of the parking lot, eyes fixed on the road. To Dan’s credit, ten minutes go by without a word exchanged between the two of them; the signs for St Louis fade into the distance while he shoots Tom the odd glance, jittering his leg and tapping his fingers to some off-tempo tune.

‘Ain’t you going to ask?’ he finally asks. 

Tom steels himself. ‘Ask what.’

‘Y’know,’ Dan says slyly. ‘If I took it up the ass.’

‘Why the hell would I —’

Dan slaps his hands against the window, eyes gone huge. ‘Jumpin’ Jesus, there’s a Waffle House right there, I could eat the dick off a horse I’m so hungry. Pull over.’

Tom raises his eyebrows. 

‘Oh, come on, man.’ Dan does a Boy Scout pose, dripping with fake earnestness. ‘I hereby swear to abstain from discussin’ any and all ass-fuckin’ for however long it takes me to eat that establishment out of house and home. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

‘Like anyone’d let you be a Boy Scout,’ mutters Tom darkly, but he makes the exit and Dan thumps the car roof with glee.

Tom hangs back while Dan drapes himself over the diner counter with a low moan. ‘Waffles, darlin’,’ he says. ‘It’s medical. Make it bacon and make it fast, I don’t know how long I can make it. And an egg. Two eggs.’ 

The girl behind the till looks alarmed. ‘And you, sir?’

‘Just coffee with cream,’ says Tom, trying not to let Dan get to him. ‘Thanks.’

They take a booth. Tom studies the sachets of ketchup and mustard while Dan studies him through his limp tangle of hair.

‘Now, stop me if I’m wrong,’ grunts Dan. ‘Or has the stick up your ass got even bigger? This poster boy for straight and sober deal is pretty damn boring — what happened to the guy who called me a dick-faced cunt in front of his impressionable kids? I never liked him, but at least he had balls whenever Lucy wasn’t out bustin’ them.’

Tom frowns into his coffee, lets the mention of Will and Julie slide. ‘How’d you tell I quit drinkin’?’

‘The whole tragic look. And I might’ve called Lucy a while back — how’d you think I got your number? She said something about you workin’ the steps, bein’ a right righteous pain in her ass.’

The food arrives and Dan lets out a whistle, scraping his hair away from his face so he can dig in with gusto. Tom watches, mildly repulsed.

‘The thing with them self-help groups,’ says Dan through a mouthful of bacon. 'You ask me, it’s all one big scam, man.’ He points his fork in Tom’s direction. ‘See, all they do is replace the sickness. Addicted to alcohol? Well, come on in! Swap out that addiction for an addiction to God; nicotine; even that shitty coffee they give you til you can’t drink any other. That’s how they get you.’

Tom makes a non-committal sound. Sensing the loss of his audience, Dan changes tack.

‘So tell me, Tommo, how’s life? If you’d asked me, I would’ve said you’d have —’ He makes a pistol with his fingers, mimes shooting it at his temple. ‘—by now. Who’re you fuckin’? Anyone I know?’

Tom tightens his grip on his coffee. ‘Me and Lucy’re still married, case you forgot.’

‘Shit, someone should tell her that. And I see no ring, since you’re feelin smart.’ He waggles his fingers. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve gone full Jesus, abstainin’ from that unenlightened mortal shit.’

‘You’re the one goin’ around lookin’ like a b-movie _Jesus of Nazareth_ , asshole,’ deadpans Tom.

‘Hah, Purcell gets off a good one. Still avoiding the question though.’ Dan squints at Tom. ‘Oh shit,’ he crows, slopping syrup down his beard. ‘It _is_ someone I know. Oh man, this stuff writes itself.’

The anger boils in Tom’s gut. He can feel his fingers itching to grab Dan by his lank hair and slam his face open on his plate, but he’s better than that now. It gets him, though, how easily Dan sees through him: he always had a skill for finding Tom’s weaknesses. Maybe it’s because he enjoys it.

‘I ain’t fuckin’ anyone,’ Tom says. ‘Not that it’s any of your damn business.’

‘ _Not_ fuckin’ someone I know,’ groans Dan, clapping a hand to his forehead. 'Now that’s some real sad repressed shit. What’s the worst that’s gonna happen, he beats your head in with a tyre iron? Be doin’ you a favour. Better than that special kind of cancer that’s goin’ around.’

Blood pulses in Tom’s ears. He knows there’s no way Dan remembers Roland, wasn’t like he’d been thinking of it back then, with Roland’s hand on his arm and his son fresh in his grave. There’s no way, but a wave of nerves washes over him regardless. He doesn’t think he can bear the sound of Roland’s name in Dan’s mouth as if it’s a dirty thing.

‘You better get that to go,’ Tom grunts, getting to his feet. ‘And you better work on shuttin’ the fuck up if you want to catch that bus, cause I don’t give a shit whether you make it or not. Get it?’

Dan grins up at him, his electric blue eyes gone a little crazy. ‘There he is,’ he says. ‘Not even a bottle to hide behind — it’s Tom fuckin’ Purcell, ladies and gentlemen.’ He hops to his feet and does a half-bow, letting Tom lead the way to the door. ‘Shall we?’

Turns out his anger is still there despite all his pretending to the contrary. 

The other thing, too. The one with Roland’s face. 

***

_1988_

It takes Lori two full years to convince him to buy the house. They’ve agreed this time round things are going to be different — no flaking out, they’re in it for the long run. Roland wants to show he can commit so he bears the open-house visits with good grace, gives his opinion, packs up his things and moves out to the suburbs like he swore he never would. He buys the house.

Lori throws herself into turning the place into a home, methodically working her way through paint testers, curtain samples, furniture arrangement that changes so often he keeps bumping into things when he heads to the fridge in the middle of the night. Roland organises his records and doesn’t think of Tom. He only smokes outdoors. 

Real couples make sacrifices, says Lori, dragging him to bed after he stays up late typing out reportsfor the third night in a row — and he goes, and she doesn’t show any disappointment when he falls asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.

Lori is lovely. He doesn’t deserve her. A part of him is too selfish to give her what she wants, the part slowly cracking open after years spent buried and rusting under deep earth, the part that he can never share. 

So he gives her everything else. He goes with her to mass on Christmas and Easter and some Sundays in between, and he says nothing at the sight of Tom’s dark head a few rows ahead of them. He remembers the feel of his hair through his hands. Wet from the bath or dry as the morning he had sheared his curls with a pair of kitchen scissors in cool sunlight of his apartment; it all suddenly seems more real to him than Lori and God under the high-vaulted arc of the darkened church roof. 

If Lori notices that he doesn’t talk to Tom after the service she never mentions it, and he never brings it up himself. As if ignoring the man could stop the memories from fluttering open in his chest. 

Sometimes Lori goes out of town, leaving him with nothing but the cold side of her bed for company as he lies in the dark and lets his mind wander to places best left alone.

Roland's fingers itch for the phone. Instead of calling Tom he rings up the 1-800 numbers and clicks through the prerecorded male voices, never listening long enough to be connected. Those disembodied men are nothing more to him than their descriptions — faceless variations of hair colour, height, race — but their bold list of needs comforts him. He’s faithful. It’s enough.

He remembers bars. Favours for vice he had been happy to do, people he had interviewed in the stranger parts of town while the curiosity itched deep inside him. It seems so obvious, looking back. 

‘I swear,’ says Lori, swatting Roland’s head as he lies with his head in her lap one lazy afternoon. ‘It was you that wanted a place with a work shed, but I don’t exactly see you scramblin’ to make it so. I’ve unpacked everything else.’

‘And like I’ve said, woman,’ he grunts. ‘I’m goin’ to paint it before we get there. It’s a delicate process.’ 

Work has kept him so busy that the process is at a more nascent stage then he would like. He has the hours clocked up so he cuts work early one Friday, drives home with a case of beer rattling on the seat beside him and the radio turned up high to find Lori already in the kitchen. Surprise flashes across her face as he enters.

‘Hey,’ she says, snaking her hands around his neck. ‘Should’ve called to say you’d be early.’

‘Got the mailman upstairs, that it? Well, I don’t want to cramp your style but —’ He holds up the beers. ‘Got time for a break?’

‘Very funny. Give me one.’ 

‘Yes ma’am.’ Roland cracks one open on the counter and takes another for himself. He leans against the kitchen island and takes a swig, basking in the late afternoon sunlight. The garden is bright with it. ‘Hey,’ he says after a while. ‘Did you paint the damn shed?’

Lori covers her eyes and laughs. ‘It was meant to be a surprise. Hope you weren’t set on doing it yourself.’

‘Nah, nah, it looks good.’ He’s had the white paint sitting around unopened since they bought the place, set to match the house. ‘But the detective in me says you didn’t do that yourself. Not a speck of paint on you.’

‘I was talking about it with one of the guys from church and he offered to help if he had a free day. He’s nearly done.’

‘Ah, so you _have_ had a man over.’

‘You got me,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘Go bring him a beer.’

The paint shines fresh and wet in the sunshine as Roland moseys into the garden, a bottle in each hand. It’s a neat job. He walks around the back of the shed and there’s Tom, with his shirt unbuttoned and white paint freckling his forearms, bending over the tin of paint and Roland is filled with a sudden feeling that it’s _his_ garden and that Roland is the one intruding — that Will and Julie Purcell will run out barefoot at any minute, laughing and pushing each other in the ribs, and Tom will turn and say _I was wonderin’ where y’all got to_ like the past eight years have been a bad dream of someone else’s life. 

Then Tom spots him and the image breaks apart. His hair is pushed back around his ears, face clean shaven; a different man to the father and the drunk. ‘Roland,’ Tom says, and he sounds pleased, if a little nervous. ‘Lori said you wouldn’t be back til later.’

‘She said to offer you one of these but, uh, I’m guessin’ that’s out of the question.’ 

The corner of Tom’s mouth quirks upward in amusement. ‘Two years now,’ he admits.

Roland’s grip has gone slick on the glass. He dumps the beers on the bench but then his hands feel conspicuously empty, and he doesn’t know what to do with them. ‘That’s great,’ he says earnestly. ‘Congrats, man. I’m happy for you.’

Tom shrugs. ‘I mean, if it weren’t for you…’

It’s good to hear his voice after so long. Roland watches Tom trail off, the unspoken words and the unpleasantness of their last encounters fading away under the bright sun as the surprise of seeing him surges into a rush of genuine fondness that leaves him with one impulse. He pulls Tom forward and kisses him. 

The paintbrush drops to the grass at their feet.

It’s a chaste kiss, right until Tom makes a faint noise of surprise against his mouth and Roland leans in to chase the sound with a hunger he is only now learning exists, emboldened by his own daring and the way Tom is cracking open to his touch. He pulls him closer by the belt loops, digging his thumbs in — and then Tom pulls away, breathing like a man surfacing from deep water. 

‘Roland,’ he groans, dragging a hand over his eyes. ‘You can’t—’

‘Can’t what?’ 

‘ _I_ can’t — it ain’t — Where d’you think we are?’ 

Roland blinks. They’re behind the shed, staring at each other with mounting confusion. Lori is waiting in the house, _their_ house. ‘Tom…’ he says. ‘I —’

‘I’m goin’ to finish up here and then I’m goin’ to get in my car and drive home. Whatever this is,’ says Tom, ‘It’s done. You made a mistake.’

‘A mistake.’ Roland’s voice is flat. He wishes he could tell Tom about how many times he’s imagined it, if that still makes it all a mistake, but the pained expression pinching Tom’s face closed makes him bite his tongue.

‘Right.’ 

‘I’m sorry. Tom. I wasn’t thinkin’.’

Tom picks up the paintbrush and nods. ‘It’s okay. Hey,’ he says, maybe sensing the weight of utter dejection weighing on Roland’s shoulders as he turns to go. ‘It’s good to see you, Roland.’

‘Yeah,’ Roland says. He can still taste Tom on his lips, dry and harsh with nicotine. ‘It’s good to see you too.’

He takes the beers and retreats to the shame of the house, drinking both in the time it takes for Lori to realise that he’s slumped in his office instead of sitting outside. He has never felt more cruel. Trust him to ruin any chance at renewing his friendship with Tom and betray Lori with his own thoughtlessness like a— 

‘It’s nice, ain’t it? The shed.’ says Lori, interrupting his misery. ‘What d’you think?’

‘Mhm.’ 

Lori flicks him on the arm. ‘Now,' she asks, frowning good-naturedly as she swipes at something on the tip of his nose. ‘How did you manage to get paint there in the first place?’ 

Roland shrugs. The white stain on the lawn washes out with the next rain.

***

For the first time in years Tom feels trapped. Pacing the boundaries of his own routine, testing the careful barriers he has created to keep himself on the path lit by God’s love while he reads through Old Testament psalms, the book of Job. _Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?_ He brings men home from time to time. He lets them fuck him and he lets them leave, and then he gets down on his knees and prays until he feels the need cooling on his skin. It feels less destructive — less dangerous — than thinking of Roland.

Maybe that’s the real test.It’s not all that different than the rest of his life, wanting something he can’t have. He wants his children back. He wants a drink. He wants Roland’s hands on him. 

Time passes and he gives himself over to smaller losses in the hope that they’ll bury the dull pain of the old. It steadies him. Every once in a while he visits card rooms, places he can risk something without destroying himself completely. 

Even when he wins it feels like losing. 

All just another reminder why holding on to things of this world is pointless — just as gripping Roland by the hair and pulling him for a second kiss would have been pointless in a world where Roland has a woman and a career and has brought himself to act much, much too late. 

There’s an article that he cuts out of the newspaper: _Fayetteville Swears in New Police Lieutenant,_ a black and white picture beneath. Roland in uniform, shaking hands with another man. His eyes are grainy. Hair trimmed down to the stiff line of his collar and his hands safely fixed inside the frame.

Tom keeps it slotted in between polaroids of Will and Julie in the shoebox under his bed. He prays for them all, sometimes.

***

_ 1990 _

Julie Purcell is not the only thing her fingerprints bring back from the dead. The urge to check in on Tom is there, insistent, and it’s been long enough that his embarrassment has faded along with the confusion of their last meeting so Roland goes to see him about reopening the case. Tom’s trailer is the same, neat, turntable empty. It comforts him how easily time circles back to simpler versions of this room, the old fondness striking a familiar chord in his heart as he watches Tom brew coffee and occupy himself with doling out the right amount of creamer and sugar.

Tom calls him _Lieutenant_ , as if the formality might keep Roland from making any fresh confessions; a reminder of where they are and what Roland has to lose. He’s grateful for it. He watches Tom as he talks, asks how he is: he is just an old friend checking in, nothing more. 

‘Can I ask you something?’ says Tom, dark eyes catching Roland’s across the counter and Roland looks back steadily, tells him he can. ‘Would you pray with me?’

He sits beside Tom and lets him take his hand. It’s dry and warm in his own, no sense of shame or hesitation as Tom laces his fingers through Roland’s and closes his eyes. Roland watches his profile, taking in the fresh creases lining his forehead and under his eyes and around the speckled shadow of his jaw before lowering his own head, listening to the inflection of Tom’s voice rather than his words.

All the while he focuses on the pulse of Tom’s blood through his palm and tries to ignore the impulse to press his mouth against the ridge of Tom’s knuckles. Instead, he sits perfectly still. It doesn’t feel so bad. _You can have this,_ the quiet voice inside him says. _You can have this and no more, and you will be thankful for it._ He can almost convince himself that one touch is all he needs — and in this point in time it’s the truth.

_He’ll think about this moment later at the coroner’s office, moving the sheet aside so he can take Tom’s cold hand in his own: the feel of each bone in his fingers, strangely light and brittle in a way that makes him move slow with care as he presses his lips to the pale skin there. Tom’s fingernails are turning blue. Roland does not pray even though he feels the impulse. He looks for the words but they refuse to come, sticking in his throat along with all the things he could have said the last time he held Tom’s hand in his._

_He lets Tom down, again._

But right now Roland knows nothing of that. He allows himself to squeeze Tom’s hand as Tom murmurs _Amen_ , fleeting and light, and Tom lifts his head and looks at him with a soft smile straining at the edges of his mouth and eyes that makes all the unsaid things between them as clear as if he had spoken them. He doesn’t pull away.

They sit there for a long time. Sun slants across the trailer and Tom closes his eyes again, praying or asleep he can’t tell, fingers twitching against Roland’s wrist as his watch ticks out the seconds until they will let go of each other and continue their separate lives, filled with a fresh kind of understanding: Julie Purcell is alive and the world is full of second chances. Roland holds on for as long as he can.

**Author's Note:**

> It's about the hand holding (withholding). 
> 
> Fic Journal of the Plague Year Notes:  
> I was working out some stuff in this one, along with shamelessly inserting some of my own lockdown experiences in there for fun (minus the alcohol withdrawal. please do not go cold turkey at this time). Tom and Roland spend a lot of time apart in this and the overall vibe is a more sadly accepting of canon than usual -- but, in essence, there's something to be said for looking out for the people we love despite the distance between us. Comments appreciated!


End file.
